Marketing Tips for UK Builders Plumbers Electricians Part 5 – Telephone Marketing

Using the telephone effectively to market your business can be one of the greatest forms of marketing you could use. Using the phone is not for everyone but it is well worth giving it a try. The reason why the telephone is so powerful is that you can react to what the person on the other end of the phone is saying, as the conversation develops you can offer or talk about other products that might suit their needs.

Nobody likes to make cold calls and the easiest people in the world to sell to are your existing customers, if you have a good relationship with your customers they will be willing to talk to you.

Here are a few tips to getting more business from your existing customers using the telephone:

• Ask questions and listen, if you ask enough questions while you are on the phone you will get a feel for your customers needs, you can then offer a more suitable product or service, go in all guns blazing with your offers first and it will get you nowhere.
• Try different approaches and keep some notes of points you want to talk about on the call, test the different approaches to see which approach works best.
• Say to your customer that you are calling to check that they are happy with the service they have received from your company; this is a great way of getting the call rolling.
• Mention a product or service that they have never bought before, they may need it but not realise you offer it. I have been amazed in the past when my customers have gone elsewhere for products that I offered because they did not realise I offered them too. It was not their fault; it was mine for not making it clear and not continually communicating with them.
• If the caller on the other end of the phone is near a computer this is an excellent opportunity for you to show them some stuff on your website.
• You can ask for referrals and you can also ask them if there is anything they need related to what you do that you do not already offer, this could be a way of creating a new service you didn’t even realise people wanted.

Don’t be afraid of the phone, start by calling your existing customers and then all the people who have contacted you but have not yet become customers, I am convinced that 99% of UK builders plumbers electricians do not use the phone in this way. It will make you money.